Watching the Karaoke Sauron's floundering appearances on Britain's Got Talent this week, some of you may be wondering what causes a once-fearsome evil genius to become a comic figure.

The answer, usually, is cryogenic freezing – and Simon's newly acquired squinty eyelid could suggest he did not merely fly over from America last weekend, but in fact blasted himself into space and was placed into cryostasis, before returning to a world that had moved indisputably on from his brand of evil.

However, Lost in Showbiz would caution against this reading. Simon's whacking of his beloved Cheryl Cole was a classically dispassionate mafia manoeuvre, which will only raise his status within the wicked wastes of American network television. Furthermore, you are advised to remember that Sauron eventually manifests as simply a vast, unblinking eye – meaning that what you are very likely witnessing with the droopy lid is Simon beginning to shed his corporeal form. Write him off at your peril.